How a logistics company stops losing forgotten negotiations and expiring offers

Who is the company and where are negotiations lost?

Think of a transport and logistics company that sells services: palletised freight, dedicated runs and temporary storage. On Markonex it quotes on requests in the Transport & logistics category and always has several negotiations open in parallel.

Each negotiation has rounds, counter-offers and deadlines. When the dispatcher is on the road or on the phone with drivers, a counter-offer received in the morning can stay unanswered until evening.

How were offers followed before the agent?

The platform's notifications and reminders were there, but they got mixed with every other message. The dispatcher opened each offer to see what had changed and what needed an answer.

• Counter-offers with small changes were read as carefully as big ones.
• Offers close to expiry were noticed too late.
• There was no daily summary for the company owner.

What do you need to start an agent like this?

Markonex Agents are Claude agents, from Anthropic, that a company creates in the Markonex Agents web app. The agent works for the company, not for a single employee, and uses the company's own Anthropic API key: model usage is paid directly to Anthropic, from the company's prepaid credits, not to Markonex. The cost shown in the app is an estimate.

• The company is verified by the platform (the "Verified by the platform" badge).
• The administrator turns on Agents and MCP under My company → AI assistants → Agents and ticks the information notice.
• In Markonex Agents, under "API keys", the company adds its Anthropic key; only the last 4 characters remain visible.
• The "New agent" wizard has these steps: API key, Model, Instructions, Permissions, Schedules, Limits (monthly budget, per-run budget, maximum runs per day) and Summary.
• Permissions in plain language: the agent can read the company's offers, negotiations, messages and notifications and can prepare counter-offers and messages. Counter-offers and messages are sent only after approval.

How do you try it safely, before using real data?

Every company has a separate test environment: a "(TEST)" company and up to two test partner companies, with their own data, no emails, no push notifications and no ANAF or e-Factura. There you can simulate a negotiation with the test partner company and see what the agent summarises and which counter-offer it prepares.

In the test environment the agent confirms its own actions, so you can see the whole flow quickly. In the real account the same actions wait for a person to approve them. The test environment can be reset or deleted at any time.

Step 1: write the limits within which the agent may negotiate

The instructions say what the agent checks, how it summarises and, above all, how far it may go when preparing a counter-offer.

1. Agent instructions

   Check our open offers. For each offer with a new round from the customer, summarise in two lines what changed. If the customer asks for a discount of at most 5% compared with our last round, prepare a counter-offer at half the difference, with the same terms. If they ask for more, prepare nothing and flag the offer for the dispatcher. List separately the offers expiring within the next 3 days.

Step 2: schedule the checks during the day

The schedule can be 8:00, 12:00 and 16:00 on working days. Schedules run at most once an hour, and under "Limits" you set the budget and the maximum number of runs per day.

Step 3: the agent summarises the new rounds

In the platform, each round shows all the terms, and what changed since the previous round is highlighted. The agent reads the same data and writes the summary in the run report.

1. The agent

   Three offers have new rounds. Palletised freight Cluj - Bucharest: the customer asks for a 4% discount, other terms unchanged; I prepared a counter-offer at 2% off. Dedicated runs for a building site: the customer asks for 12% off and payment in 60 days, I flagged it for the dispatcher. Temporary storage: the customer accepted the price and asks about the start date. Expiring within 3 days: 2 offers with no reply from the customer.

Step 4: the dispatcher approves the counter-offer and the message

The counter-offer and the reply about the start date appear as prepared actions in Markonex Agents. The dispatcher reads them and decides.

1. Markonex Agents - approval

   The agent wants to run a prepared action: counter-offer on "Palletised freight Cluj - Bucharest", price reduced by 2% from the previous round, other terms unchanged. Approve / Reject

What changes for the dispatcher and the owner?

The dispatcher no longer opens every offer to find out what changed: they get the summary and approve or reject the prepared actions. Negotiations that need big decisions reach them flagged, and expiring offers are no longer forgotten. As an illustrative estimate, the response time to a simple counter-offer can drop from several hours to under an hour on busy days; the real result depends on how quickly someone approves.

What limits and safeguards does the agent have?

The agent has a single tool: the Markonex MCP server. It does not browse the web, open files or run code. It has no memory between runs: each run starts from the data in the platform and the instructions the company wrote. The agent cannot accept an offer or confirm an agreement without approval, and accepting offers and confirming agreements also require both companies to be verified by the platform.

• It works only with the permissions ticked when it was created, within the rights of the user whose identity it uses.
• Schedules run at most once an hour, on Romanian time; a run may start a few minutes late.
• Prepared commercial actions wait for approval by a user with the agents-management permission, who is notified in the app, by push or by email; the approval is valid for 24 hours and only while the run is still active.
• An approved action runs in the name of the person who approved it, and the activity log shows "Name (via Anthropic agent #id)".
• The agent cannot issue or cancel invoices, sends nothing to e-Factura, makes no payments and cannot administer the company or its users.
• If the administrator turns Agents off for the company, all agent access is revoked at once.